Enabling Fresh-Produce Availability in Long-Term Care via Hydroponic Green Walls: A Multisite Operational and Cost Evaluation

Background/Objectives: Limited access to fresh produce and persistent nutrition risk in long-term care (LTC) can affect dietary quality and rehabilitation capacity, particularly where seasonality and supply constraints affect food environments. Indoor hydroponic systems may support on-site production of leafy greens and herbs, but their adoption depends on practical feasibility. This study evaluated the routine staffing time and labour-only costs associated with maintaining hydroponic green wall units in LTC settings. Methods: A prospective, multi-site observational quantitative service evaluation was conducted from March 2023 to September 2024 across four LTC settings in Western Canada. Staff and volunteers logged routine interactions with wall-mounted hydroponic green wall units using adjacent mounted iPads. Entries captured task type(s), duration, using prespecified time categories, and staff role. Descriptive analyses summarized entries and actions by role and site. Labour costs were estimated using province-specific wage bands. Workload and costs were normalized using active weeks as weeks with ≥1 logged interaction. Results: A total of 112 log entries were recorded, corresponding to 362 logged actions and 962.0 min of recorded staff engagement time. Recreation therapists/dietitians submitted 45.5% of entries (n = 51), followed by care aides (27.7%, n = 31), volunteers (17.0%, n = 19), management (7.1%, n = 8), and registered nurses (2.7%, n = 3). Actions were dominated by monitoring and routine maintenance; 36.0% of time-recorded interactions were 0–5 min. Mean engagement was 8.7 min per time-recorded entry. Normalized to 59 active site-weeks, average workload was 16.3 min per active site-week (range 11.8–21.3), with labour-only costs of approximately 7.24 CAD per week (5.96–8.34) and 28.9 CAD per 4-week month (23.84–33.36). Conclusions: Routine upkeep of hydroponic green wall units required modest, predictable staff time and low labour-only costs, with responsibilities largely distributed across non-registered nurse roles. These findings provide feasibility parameters relevant to sustaining hydroponics as an enabling infrastructure component of nutrition-supportive LTC food environments and may be of value to inform future outcome-focused evaluations incorporating production, utilization, nutrition and rehabilitation-relevant endpoints.